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William Sloane Coffin, Sr. (April 15, 1879 - December 16, 1933) was president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a director W. & J. Sloane Company, his family's business, which was founded by his grandfather, William Sloane, from Kilmarnock, Scotland.
Biography
Coffin was born on April 15, 1879 in New York to Edmund Coffin. He graduated from Yale College in 1900 and married Catherine Butterfield on September 14, 1920 in Barnstable, Massachusetts. They had a son together, William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who would become a clergyman and a noted peace activist.
Coffin, Sr. was a director of the family's furniture and rug businsss, W. & J. Sloane Company, and later its vice-president. He was elected a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1924, and in 1931 became its president.
W. & J. Sloane acquired the California Furniture Company, and in 1925 Coffin created a subsidiary, The Company of Master Craftsmmen, to make Colonia] Revival furniture in a factory in Flushing, Queens. Sloane was heavily involved in manufacturing and selling this style, and had another subsidiary, the Oneidacraft Company in Oneida, New York, which made it as well.
Coffin was involved in purchasing real estate properties from Trinity Church and redeveloping them. These houses are now located in the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District. He founded the Hearth and Home Corporation, of which he was president, in order to renovate older buildings near downtown Manhattan to provide housing for middle-class New Yorkers, which Coffin saw as a solution to the "apartment house problem" of the late 1910s and early 1920s. In 1920 Hearth and Home purchased the entire block of mid-19th century row houses bounded by MacDougal, Sullivan, West Houston and Bleecker Streets and renovated those on MacDougal and Sullivan into spacious apartments, with the backyards of the buildings connected to form a common garden. The New York Times said about the project on January 30, 1921 that " development made a real contribution to the solution of the housing problem and is an excellent example of what can be done to other properties in the city, and the rehabilitation of homey old buildings." The buildings were sold to individual owners in 1924, but with covenants guaranteeing aesthetic continuity and no future redevelopment of the site. These houses now make up the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District.
Coffin died on December 16, 1933 in New York City, and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
See also
References
- ^ Staff (December 18, 1933). "William Sloane Coffin". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-11-08.
- ^ White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot; Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19538-386-7., p.141
- ^ NYCLPC MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District Designation Report"
- ^ New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; Dolkart, Andrew S.; Postal, Matthew A. (2009). Postal, Matthew A. (ed.). Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1. p.50
- "Master Craftsmen Table" Kovels (January 5, 2011)
- ^ Albrecht, Donald. The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis Museum of the City of New York, 2011. p.140. ISBN 9781580932851
- William Sloane Coffin Sr. at Find a Grave
External link
- William Sloane Coffin, Sr. papers at Yale University
- William Sloane Coffin, Sr. portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art